Re: [PATCH 00/19] Refresh queued CET virtualization series

From: Yang, Weijiang
Date: Sat Jun 18 2022 - 02:43:44 EST



On 6/16/2022 11:28 PM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
On 6/16/22 16:18, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
On Thu, Jun 16, 2022 at 12:21:20PM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
On 6/16/22 12:12, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
Do I understand this right in that a host without X86_KERNEL_IBT cannot
run a guest with X86_KERNEL_IBT on? That seems unfortunate, since that
was exactly what I did while developing the X86_KERNEL_IBT patches.

I'm thinking that if the hardware supports it, KVM should expose it,
irrespective of the host kernel using it.

For IBT in particular, I think all processor state is only loaded and stored
at vmentry/vmexit (does not need XSAVES), so it should be feasible.

That would be the S_CET stuff, yeah, that's VMCS managed. The U_CET
stuff is all XSAVE though.

What matters is whether XFEATURE_MASK_USER_SUPPORTED includes XFEATURE_CET_USER.

Small correction, XFEATURE_CET_USER belongs to XFEATURE_MASK_SUPERVISOR_SUPPORTED, the name is misleading.


If you build with !X86_KERNEL_IBT, KVM can still rely on the FPU state for U_CET state, and S_CET is saved/restored via the VMCS independent of X86_KERNEL_IBT.

A fundamental question is, should KVM always honor host CET enablement before expose the feature to guest? i.e., check X86_KERNEL_IBT and X86_SHADOW_STACK.



Paolo

But funny thing, CPUID doesn't enumerate {U,S}_CET separately. It *does*
enumerate IBT and SS separately, but for each IBT/SS you have to
implement both U and S.

That was a problem with the first series, which only implemented support
for U_CET while advertising IBT and SS (very much including S_CET), and
still is a problem with this series because S_SS is missing while
advertised.